LibGuides: The Turning: Home

The Turning Overview

Tim Winton's The Turning is a collection of interconnected short stories set in the small coastal towns of Western Australia. Each story delves into the lives of ordinary people facing pivotal moments of change, reflection, and transformation. Themes of family, love, loss, and redemption run throughout the book, with many characters reappearing in different stories, revealing new facets of their lives.

The stories are linked by their exploration of turning points in life—whether they involve confronting past mistakes, dealing with regrets, or striving for personal growth. The coastal setting plays a crucial role, often reflecting the emotional landscapes of the characters, with the harsh beauty of nature serving as a backdrop to their struggles and hopes.

Winton’s writing captures the complexity of human relationships and the way choices, both big and small, shape lives. The Turning is celebrated for its evocative language, deep character studies, and exploration of spiritual and emotional transitions. The book paints a vivid portrait of rural Australian life, with its quiet intensity and profound moments of change.

Finding Resources in Accessit

Here are some resources that you may find useful during your studies. Search the Bennies catalogue Accessit for more, or browse the Non-fiction collection NFS.

The Turning by Tim Winton
ISBN: 9780330421386
Publication Date: 2004-01-01
Tim Winton's stunning collection of connected stories is about turnings of all kinds—changes of heart, slow awakenings, nasty surprises and accidents, sudden detours, resolves made or broken.

Brothers cease speaking to each other, husbands abandon wives and children, grown men are haunted by childhood fears. People struggle against the weight of their own history and try to reconcile themselves to their place in the world.

With extraordinary insight and tenderness, Winton explores the demons and frailties of ordinary people whose lives are not what they had hoped.
Breath by Winton, T.
Call Number: F WIN
ISBN: 9780241015308
Publication Date: 2008
Tim Winton is Australia’s best-loved novelist. Breath is an extraordinary evocation of an adolescence spent resisting complacency, testing one’s limits against nature, finding like-minded souls, and discovering just how far one breath will take you. It’s a story of extremes—extreme sports and extreme emotions.
Cloudstreet by Winton, T.
Call Number: F WIN
ISBN: 9780670042920
Publication Date: 2004
Hailed as a classic, Tim Winton's masterful family saga is both a paean to working-class Australians and an unflinching examination of the human heart's capacity for sorrow, joy, and endless gradations in between. An award-winning work, Cloudstreet exemplifies the brilliant ability of fiction to captivate and inspire.

Reading Notes

ClickView

A collection of short films based on 18 different stories written by Australian author Tim Winton, exploring the impact of the past on the present and how seemingly random incidents can drastically shape us.

YouTube

This video explores Tim Winton's personal history and the connection between him and Vic Lang. It analyses the provincial nature of the writing. And it identifies the development of readers' empathy as the purpose for 'The Turning'.

This lesson analyses Tim Winton's use of form and structure to shape meaning in 'The Turning.'

The Turning is based on novelist Tim Winton's 2004 collection of intertwined stories set in a coastal community in Western Australia. In this scene, directed by Mia Wasikowska, we meet the stories occasional-protagonist Vic Lang.

LitCharts

Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on Tim Winton's The Turning. Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.

Theme Wheel

How does the Theme Wheel work?

Each wedge of the blue ring represents a chapter.
Each row of colored boxes extending from a wedge represents a part of the chapter. The closer to the blue ring, the closer to the beginning of the chapter.
The colors in each row indicate which themes are “active” in that part of the chapter.

The Theme Wheel is interactive.

Themes: Hover over or tap any of the themes in the Themes and Colors Key to show only that theme. Click a theme in the Themes Key to lock it.
Summary: Hover over or tap any row of colored boxes to read the summary associated with that row. Click the row to lock the summary.

Auslit

The Turning comprises seventeen overlapping stories of second thoughts and mid-life regret set in the brooding small-town world of coastal Western Australia. Here are turnings of all kinds - changes of heart, nasty surprises, slow awakenings, sudden detours - where people struggle against the terrible weight of the past and challenge the lives they've made for themselves.